Code of Silence

Code of Silence - Chapter 14

Since the tense meeting with Dragovich in Moscow, Zoryn Radoslav had been preoccupied with the task of bringing the Varkasoft business into his Ekranotech empire. It was a new day and a new start, he told himself as he entered the Ekranotech offices the following morning. There was much to do, and Radoslav had already been ruthless, making heavy cuts, particularly in the Varkasoft UK office, rearranging key personnel to take up new roles he'd created and generally making sure things were running as he wanted them to. He'd taken the tough decision to get rid of his one-time right-hand man, his fixer, and now there was nothing holding him back from making the decisions he wanted to. He was still rankled by Tony's aggressive stance on the unexplained payment issues that had been discovered but, for now, Tony had also been removed from the equation.

With a clear way ahead, and a driving ambition to grow and dominate within his industry, Radoslav felt more in control, but one thing still angered him more than anything; the deal he'd done with Tony Varkanopolis was supposed to be for the whole of his business, including the V-Works developments that had so excited Radoslav when they first discussed the opportunity. Sure, the reliable profitability of Varkasoft was an important part of the deal, and would help secure Ekranotech's future as they embarked upon becoming a major player in the intelligent-automotive-engineering space. But the exciting thing for Radoslav was the voice technology project Tony had created and the progress they were making under the V-Works name; it was impressive stuff, and something he also could see as an opportunity for making huge amounts of money.

Throughout his business life, Radoslav had taken risks, seized opportunities and developed a knack for making money. A lot of money. He had plenty to set him up for life, and at a relatively young age. He'd even sunk millions of dollars into speculating on, and investing in, other new ventures, companies and emerging technologies, but further success had so far eluded him. Money wasn't necessarily the driving factor for him now, although it still stung when a deal didn't go the way he wanted, or when he lost out to someone who moved quicker, had deeper pockets or took bigger risks.

During his early meetings with Tony Varkanopolis it had become clear to Radoslav that he had stumbled across something special, the nature of which he thought Tony was perhaps not fully aware of. He'd been introduced to Ross and the V-Works activity by Tony during their early meetings, and it had certainly added a little spice to discussions. Radoslav was particularly intrigued by the AI developments and voice synthesis technology they had been working on.

What he saw in V-Works was the embryo of something he'd been following in the artificial intelligence world, and he could see the opportunity. He was well versed in how Silicon Valley was leading the world with new AI technology developments. He'd studied various companies with an eye to making a move into the market, but they were either already established and growing at rates he was yet to achieve, or smaller companies starting out that were snapped up swiftly by bigger players who saw their potential. It was difficult for him to spectate on this next generation of technology. He desperately wanted a piece of the action, and was determined to get involved.

He'd read about the race by some of the big US social media and tech giants to get hold of cutting-edge voice synthesis software from an internationally acclaimed university that had developed some new technology in this area. The amounts of investment that were being tabled were incredible, unbelievable in scale, and Radoslav could see a way to get in on the game using the V-Works voice technology. He had figured he could play down his interest and concentrate on the main deal with Varkasoft, and then, after the dust had settled, he would be ready to sit at the table with some of the biggest tech names on the planet.

Tony and his small team at V-Works had studied the current state of voice synthesised technology and learnt rapidly. It was often difficult for developers to continuously see the next moves to make in a highly complex development programme, and much easier for someone who understood it at a broader level to take a fresh perspective and make the huge leaps forward. And that's exactly what Ross had managed to do with the V-Works voice synthesis software. It was as good as anything else on the technology scene at that time, but quicker, more flexible and able to recreate a human voice from less than ten seconds of input from any source: a phone call, a live or historic recording, or any reasonably clear acoustic input that was available.